If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You will be required to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Comment

There are crappy doctors here where you can't get a straight answer. The nice thing about it is that you can take your business elsewhere. I personally prefer a doctor who takes the time to explain things to me, and believes that I can actually understand what is going on. My endocrinologist, my wife's first OB, and our first and current pediatrician all fit the bill as good doctors. Unfortunately when we moved we had to start over finding good doctors, and my wife's second OB was pretty crappy.

Well thats exactly my point. If you are not happy with your doctor then change them. If the o.p. is under some sort of socialized medicine and cant go to a different doctor, well how good is it? This is the biggest point I think most people dont understand about socialized "anything".

Well thats exactly my point. If you are not happy with your doctor then change them. If the o.p. is under some sort of socialized medicine and cant go to a different doctor, well how good is it? This is the biggest point I think most people dont understand about socialized "anything".

Here we go again!!

My mom lives in Canada. A few years ago she was having problems with her blood pressure rising and dropping. We didn't know it at the time but she had a tumor on her thyroid. Very uncommon. Anyway, her doctor put her on blood pressure medication and it didn't really help. I was up there visiting and we were driving in Vancouver, not near where she lives, when she started to feel her heart beat really hard, so I pulled over and there was a clinic in a mall. She showed her Social Insurance card, the equivalent of a SS card here, and the doctor saw her right away and gave her something to help her BP drop back to normal. After she was okay he asked her what her doctor had told her and gave her his diagnosis, suggesting that she get her thyroid checked.

Later that night she woke me up and was feeling ill again. Now this was terrifying to me, my mom is one tough salt and I never saw her sick before. She actually walked around on a broken foot for a whole day thinking it would go away one time, So I was terrified to see her like this. I took her to an emergency room and a doctor saw her withing ten minutes. Anyway, to speed this story along, she got a second opinion when we got home, had all the different tests that all four doctors recommended, they found the tumor, benign, removed it and she is back to kicking *** again. Didn't pay one cent. Didn't wait on any waiting lists. Didn't have to deal with any insurance companies.

My only experience with an emergency room here was when I severed two tendons in my hand removing a window. I was driven to the ER here in the Bay Area and waited in the waiting room for two hours before they even gave me the damned paperwork to fill out. The "doctor" asked a nurse to look at my hand and accepted his diagnosis that there was no internal damage and the nurse stitched me up while telling me that he sees worse stuff than my hand all the time. They told me to go back to work. I told them I had a 200lb window to install and asked if my stitches would be okay to lift with. They said yes.

I did, the rest of the tendons that were nearly cut through by the glass popped when I lifted the window and I couldn't move my finger. Back to the ER. 2 more hours. different doctor, same nurse. Yes I need a plastic surgeon to do the surgery, wait here. I waited for another hour or two before I finally asked a nurse walking by when the surgeon would be coming because I had to arrange to get my jobsite shut down. Oh, we don't do that here, you have to make an appointment. Off they walk. Because of their delay i couldn't even find an appointment with a surgeon until monday, this was friday afternoon by this point. The surgeon told me that if they had figured it out BEFORE my tendons snapped it would have been no big deal instead of two months off work and some strength loss in my hand. Then the workers comp BS started. And I couldn't pick my aftercare doctor either.

Needless to say i am glad my mom was in Canada when all that stuff went down instead of Alameda County CA.

It is all anecdotal of course, but I believe my own experience over Limbaugh OR Michael Moore.

That said, I wouldn't trust OUR government, either party, to figure out a crossword puzzle without screwing it up, so I am not for socialized health care here. But again, no need to demonize something that actually works pretty well. Sure we have many of the best doctors here, but we have the best basketball players too, and it has nothing to do with capitalism.

Eli

A good carpenter makes few mistakes, a great carpenter can fix his own.

There are good and bad systems in any market, that we can agree on. If you need to get a second opinion from from plumbers woodworkers, electricians, etc. on a message board there is something really wrong going on.

I can tell you from my own experience that when my son was operated on when he was one month old, we decided to go to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (C.H.O.P.) as there was only a few doctors in the country who handled "hyper-insulinism" (the opposite of diabetes). It affect something like 1 in 300,000 children. The head of this program there was the leader, in this cutting edge surgery.

The surgeon that operated on my son is one of a few doctors in the world that operates on fetuses on pregnant women (spinal biffida sp?) and the surgery that my son had. He had 50% of his pancreas removed.

11 days after the surgery and an 18 hour fast Anthony was deemed cured. To the doctors dismay they never saw a recovery as fast and as strong as his, they then nick-named him the "rock star".

Im positive that if we had socialized medicine the outcome would have been far different. I thank god every night for this.

The total cost for the surgery, care, hospital and everything was over $175,000. Total cost out of my pocket.......$0.00 Thank you Healthnet.

There are good and bad systems in any market, that we can agree on. If you need to get a second opinion from from plumbers woodworkers, electricians, etc. on a message board there is something really wrong going on.

I can tell you from my own experience that when my son was operated on when he was one month old, we decided to go to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (C.H.O.P.) as there was only a few doctors in the country who handled "hyper-insulinism" (the opposite of diabetes). It affect something like 1 in 300,000 children. The head of this program there was the leader, in this cutting edge surgery.

The surgeon that operated on my son is one of a few doctors in the world that operates on fetuses on pregnant women (spinal biffida sp?) and the surgery that my son had. He had 50% of his pancreas removed.

11 days after the surgery and an 18 hour fast Anthony was deemed cured. To the doctors dismay they never saw a recovery as fast and as strong as his, they then nick-named him the "rock star".

Im positive that if we had socialized medicine the outcome would have been far different. I thank god every night for this.

The total cost for the surgery, care, hospital and everything was over $175,000. Total cost out of my pocket.......$0.00 Thank you Healthnet.

Thanks for the sentiment about my mom, and thanks for reading that long post. Im glad your son was helped as well. My littlest brother also has spina bifida. He was born here in San Francisco and has lived here all his life. He has had several operations etc, and part of the reason my parents are for universal health care is because of the trouble they have had getting insurance for him. My dad and step mother are self employed and It has been nearly impossible get coverage for him and at times nearly prohibitively expensive. The companies tried to drop him every chance they could find. I can't speak to the details of it because my dad kind of kept it from us growing up, but that is how he explains his support of uni health care. My little brother supports it too, but to be honest he is a UCberkeley liberal elite pinko. And I'm not even joking!

I guess we are all pretty lucky. I read that in parts of Africa they are stoning witches for stealing penises over the phone, and we both have had our family members saved by medical science. We are lucky to be where we are.

Eli

A good carpenter makes few mistakes, a great carpenter can fix his own.

As I just re read that, you are correct they were not sad, it was the wrong word to insert there. It should have stated to the doctors amazement. Sometimes just rehashing that whole thing gets my juices flowing.

Well thats exactly my point. If you are not happy with your doctor then change them. If the o.p. is under some sort of socialized medicine and cant go to a different doctor, well how good is it? This is the biggest point I think most people dont understand about socialized "anything".

[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']So you call me a Liberal (a left winger) well in Australia there are two major political parties the Liberal Party which you would call your Republican Party and the Australian Labour Party which you would call your Democrats.[/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You seem to have a problem with what you call socialism well here in Australia we have private health funds which I am a member and Medicare which all Australians contribute too through their taxes and which pays a portion of every ones medical costs and all of the poor costs, I assume you have the poor in the U.S?. [/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You see in Australia we don't call it socialism we call it looking after the weak and defenceless in our society and that is what a compassionate country does for its citizens.[/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']Tony[/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/FONT]

Comment

[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']So you call me a Liberal (a left winger) well in Australia there are two major political parties the Liberal Party which you would call your Republican Party and the Australian Labour Party which you would call your Democrats.[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You seem to have a problem with what you call socialism well here in Australia we have private health funds which I am a member and Medicare which all Australians contribute too through their taxes and which pays a portion of every ones medical costs and all of the poor costs, I assume you have the poor in the U.S?. [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You see in Australia we don't call it socialism we call it looking after the weak and defenceless in our society and that is what a compassionate country does for its citizens.[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']Tony[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]

Your system may work and work well. But prehaps your system only has to deal with the weak and defensless. Unfortunatly ours has to deal with not only them but millions of illegal aliens that wander across our boarder, as well as a huge population of those that have no intention of ever getting a job or contributing to the "fund" That leaves the middle class to pay for just about everything, since the poor don't pay taxes in this country (they get earned income tax credit money back for being poor) and naturally everyone is sure the rich don't pay taxes at all.
Nationalized health care would be an econombic disaster for this country.

sigpic

Comment

[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']So you call me a Liberal (a left winger) well in Australia there are two major political parties the Liberal Party which you would call your Republican Party and the Australian Labour Party which you would call your Democrats.[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You seem to have a problem with what you call socialism well here in Australia we have private health funds which I am a member and Medicare which all Australians contribute too through their taxes and which pays a portion of every ones medical costs and all of the poor costs, I assume you have the poor in the U.S?. [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']You see in Australia we don't call it socialism we call it looking after the weak and defenceless in our society and that is what a compassionate country does for its citizens.[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']Tony[/font]
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif'] [/font]

I really dont care about politics, social programs or anything else that pertains to Australia. After doing some reading on Australia I recommend you worry about your own country's policy before worrying about ours.

Comment

I would like to thank you for your imput on my shoulder as you are the only one to answer some of the questions I wanted to know from someone that has gone through this. I am amazed you are the only one to do so out of all the so called plumbers on this forum.
I don`t have full worker comp and will have my right arm in a sling for a couple of weeks and then have to take in easy, it is a learning experience trying to use my left hand for everything.

Tony

I could have sworn I told you that it hurts like hell and it requires surgery and you can start using your limb fairly quickly but it does take a long time to heal for 100% usage. I just stated, a story that I went through, but never the less my main answer was to go to the doctor. We cannot diagnose an arm when someone falls on it and then tells us it hurts. I'm sure there are forums out there that would love to converse in such topics all of the time.

Politics seems to be the main topic these days, because of our election that is coming up. But guys create another thread for that and leave the threads alone that are not about politics. When your all done with politics and nothing else to debate, I can bring up, Ford vs Chevy again.... Attempt at humor....

Great Link for a Construction Owner/Tradesmen, and just say Garager sent you....